According to new information from the CDC, in addition to the 2 cases in Texas, 7 in California, and 2 in Kansas, the 8 in New York have now been confirmed, and an additional case has also been confirmed in Ohio (I’ve not seen any info on that case)–UPDATED below. Investigations are apparently ongoing in at least 2 Canadian provinces, also (British Columbia and Nova Scotia). An investigation is also ongoing in New Zealand after teenagers took a trip to Mexico and have shown flu-like symptoms.

Concerning to say the least, but crof and revere both have some excellent posts to keep things in perspective. I’ve hated the screaming headlines at many of the MSM sites, and Crawford has a great post encouraging calm. revere, meanwhile, has a nice overview of influenza and world travel, and what we should be focusing on now that it seems the genie is already out of the bottle.

Again, this is a fast-developing story; some of this information will probably be out of date by a few hours after I post this, so stay tuned…

Nova Scotia’s chief public health officer says the east coast Canadian province has four confirmed cases of swine flu.

Chief Public Health officer Dr. Robert Strang says Sunday four students from King’s-Edgehill School in Nova Scotia ranging in age from 12 to 17 or 18 are recovering. All of them had what he describes as “very mild” cases of the flu.

Dr. T: Thanks very much for your prompt response on “MarketBlogic, I don’t see how those are in conflict” where I was suggesting that your April 25, 2009 post that “THIRD, is this really a new virus . . . . H1N1 is a common serotype, so additional molecular testing is needed to determine that it’s “swine flu” versus “human” H1N1″ was in conflict with the CDC.

I gave the shorthand version in part because I’m still a bit dizzy from whatever version of Type A flu I had.

This is an excerpt from the April 23 press conference held by Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases:

“According to Schuchat, the virus is influenza A N1H1 mixed with swine influenza viruses. The virus contains genetic pieces from four different flu viruses — North American swine influenza, North American avian influenza, human influenza viruses and swine influenza viruses found in Asia and Europe, she said.

“That particular genetic combination of swine influenza viruses has not been recognized before in the U.S. or elsewhere,” Schuchat said.”

Like you said, the information is moving very quickly, the MSM is doing a very poor job of reporting overall and in all honesty the CDC website assumes a very low level of knowledge and so gives out inaccurate information because it’s been “dumbed down” to a simplistic level.

To the extent it matters, here’s what I think (and much of this is guessing). This strain of Type A H1N1 may have been around at a low level for a while – spreading through human-to-human but slowly. In the U.S., thus far the bug is just a slightly worse than average flu virus, but with fairly extreme GI symptoms not normally seen in the flu. There’s absolutely no cause for alarm not to mention hysteria, but I’m mildly peeved that the official CDC position grossly understates the number of cases likely in the U.S. (no one seems interested in testing people in my area, for example, probably because they’re overwhelmed), while grossly overstating the seriousness of the threat.

To date, I’ve not seen any good analysis of why the Mexican fatality rate from this flu in healthy adults appears to be higher than normal while in the U.S. the severity of the flu is pretty typical with past experience (ex the pandemic of 1917, of course).